Why not ask it to implement a chess engine first, and then use that to play against you?
Does the LLM need to learn to play chess if it can build a chess engine to play for it instead?
Does the LLM need to learn to play chess if it can build a chess engine to play for it instead?
Writing a well understood engine for a super popular problem does not count as reasoning about the problem.
Doesn't writing the engine imply understanding about the problem domain? Tool use is a widely accepted measure of intelligence.
When humans do this, they inadvertently learn something, too, but when an LLM reproduces or derives and implementation of a chess engine, it in no way implies that the LLM can follow the rules in its own "train of thought" and consistently apply the rules in its "head".
Let's say you want to evaluate my algebra skills. You make me solve some algebra challenges. If I then whip out a computer and write a calculator, or take some sticks and stones and take a couple hours to build an abacus, and then solve the algebraic challenges, this would not constitute a good solution, and would defeat the entire point of the test. If, instead, I do the algebra in my head or on paper, it might seem like there's no difference, but you can derive all sorts of information from that.
For example, you could time it, check for recurring errors I make, for interesting mistakes like mistaking 7 and 1 for one another due to bad hand-writing, etc.
If that was the goal, then me writing a calculator or crafting an abacus defeats the point of the test. Yes, me writing a calculator shows that I'm intelligent, and I understand the algebraic rules, but if the test is about applying the rules, I have not passed.
In the very same way, an LLM writing a chess engine to solve a chess benchmark that is all about LLM's reasoning capability is complete bogus and defeats the entire point.
Stop anthropomorphizing the parrot. The parrot has had stockfish's source code blasted at high pressure into its head along with dozens of millions of other pieces of code whose sole role is to have efficient algorithms to more or less brute force through the best result. Brute forcing (no matter how smart it is) isn't understanding the problem domain.